I am trying to simplify the number of cables I have hooked up behind my TV. I just replaced my 4 year old Hitachi 50HDT Plasma with a 60" Sony Bravia SXRD KDS-60A3000. I was going to get the new Pioneer 60" Kuro, but after reading tons of rave reviews about the Sony's picture, I decided to give it a try. Anyway, sorry to digress. :D

Ok, I have a PS3, XBOX 360, Toshiba HD A3, Direct TV HD satellite receiver, and an Apple TV. Everything I have but the XBOX can be hooked up via HDMI to the TV, the XBOX model I have uses component cables.

My receiver is a Pioneer Elite VSX-43TX. It does not have HDMI plus, but it does have Digital Coaxial and Toslink Digital Optical. I think most of my components have have the Digital Optical, but my receiver only has 2 inputs.

My question is, if I plug all of my components into my TV via HDMI, and then plug my TV into my receiver with a Digital Optical, then am I losing any sound quality versus plugging each component into the receiver via their Digital Optical audio output cable?

Am I making any sense? :confused:

Should I upgrade my receiver?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,


John

The digital out on most TV's is only for signals picked up with the TV's tuner. Most will also only put out stereo or DD 5.1. No other formats.

If you are simply using DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 then no you are not losing any quality. However if you plan on using Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD-MA then yes you will not be able to use those. If your receiver allows for 5.1/7.1 multichannel then you can use those for the newer formats as long as the device will decode it for you. So in a nutshell no not really unless you plan on using the lossless formats which the toslink and coax cannot support due to limited bandwidth.

The digital out on most TV's is only for signals picked up with the TV's tuner. Most will also only put out stereo or DD 5.1. No other formats.

If you are simply using DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 then no you are not losing any quality.

Actually, unless your Sony is different from nearly all other sets, it will only pass multi-channel audio from its own internal tuner. All other input sources get downmixed to stereo. You really can't use your TV as an audio switcher. You need a new receiver or an optical input switch that will enable you to feed multiple audio sources into a single input on your AVR.

;)
Come to learn something.